


The Song That Dares

by Miaou Jones (miaoujones)



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Disability, First Time, Friendship, Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-15
Updated: 2009-09-15
Packaged: 2017-10-14 00:29:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miaoujones/pseuds/Miaou%20Jones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roderich, a musical prodigy before he lost his hearing in an accident four years ago, has fallen for his interpreter, Gilbert. But he's been too afraid of losing Gilbert to confess—until now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Song That Dares

**Author's Note:**

> None of the relationships mesh with history, and the whole thing may therefore be said to be wildly out of character. orz

The music, Roderich decides, is horrible. He can feel it deep in his chest, a heavy insistent bass thump obliterating his own heartbeat, trying to take its place. It feels awful.

He sighs and looks around the gymnasium again. Even though the evening is still young, people are already leaving, drifting off to go their separate ways. Some of them will see each other over the next couple of months, and maybe they'll stay in touch after the summer and even through the years ahead, but it won't be the same. Already it's not quite the same; the official graduation party is a pale echo of the four past years.

It's really over now. The bass line thuds dully in wordless concurrence.

Feeling a hand on his leg, Roderich looks at Vash beside him—then follows the line of his other hand as it points to Gilbert going out the door.

As Roderich starts up, he feels Vash's already-forgotten hand slip from his knee. Not wanting to be rude, he pauses as he stands and looks at his friend. Vash grins and mouths "GO!", the arch of his eyebrows emphasizing the capitalization and exclamatory punctuation of the word. Roderich grins back before taking the bleachers two steps at time.

By the time Roderich gets there, Gilbert is at the end of the hallway and Roderich realizes he won't be able to catch up in time. His chest expands with the deep breath filling his lungs. He feels his lips and tongue shape the word; he feels his breath and the flick of muscle push it out, vibrations tripping off his tongue: "Gilbert!"

The vibrations must catch Gilbert, because he looks back over his shoulder. He smiles and the outer door falls shut again as he turns from it.

Roderich smiles, too. His mouth quirks up even more when he finally gets to Gilbert, but the smile fades when he asks if Gilbert is leaving.

Gilbert shakes his head. "I just wanted a little air."

Roderich lips shape an "oh" that morphs into a smile as he apologizes for chasing Gilbert down. "I thought you were leaving," he signs. He feels repetitive and his hands hover for a moment, but then he drops them without going on.

"I wouldn't go without saying goodbye." Gilbert smiles again.

Roderich tries to return it, but he can't quite hold his own smile steady, because—goodbye.

Impulsively, he hugs Gilbert.

Gilbert's arms wrap around him in turn, and they stand like that for a while.

Roderich tunes himself to Gilbert's body, trying to anticipate when Gilbert will move back, trying to feel the moment just before it so he can disengage, too, and avoid any awkwardness. When he feels Gilbert shift, Roderich starts to let go.

Before Roderich can release him fully, Gilbert takes Roderich's arms from around his neck, and moves them lower to wrap under Gilbert's own arms. Roderich realizes Gilbert has felt the little bit of shaking in Roderich's arms that Roderich himself had not been aware of until this instant, and read it for physical strain instead of nerves. Gilbert wanted to alleviate Roderich's discomfort; that must be it.

Roderich stops thinking about why Gilbert did it and settles back into the hug. He memorizes the moment, memorizes Gilbert in the moment: the way Gilbert feels and smells, the way his skin looks from this close up.

When he's ready, he lets go. Taking a step back so he can see Gilbert, and so Gilbert can see him, he says, "I'm glad I caught you. I have something for you. If you have time? It's not something I can give you here. It will take a little time..." His fingers trail off.

"Okay," Gilbert signs with a smile.

"Okay," Roderich feels his lips echo, half-formed and soundless in the corner of the smile he flashes back. Without another word, he turns and starts down the hall. He feels Gilbert coming with him. When Roderich glances over, Gilbert smiles again and doesn't try to say anything, not even to ask a question about where they're going. His smile tells Roderich more than any words shaped by hand or mouth: his smile tells Roderich that Gilbert trusts him.

Roderich trusts Gilbert as well, of course. He's had to right from the day they met, but the trust changed when Gilbert began to trust him, too; it changed when they became friends. Gilbert is one of his best friends now.

Roderich would really like for him to be more. He has felt this way for a while, but it's only now that he might never see Gilbert again; now, he can take the risk of changing the trust again, of deepening it even more—or breaking it.

Stopping at the door to the music room, he fumbles in his pocket for the key he hasn't turned in yet. As Gilbert drapes himself in the folding chair set out for him, Roderich seats himself on the piano bench.

Hands poised above the keys, he takes a breath, and begins. He feels the familiar thrill of the vibrations with his fingertips, in his fingertips, a rush and swell of physical memory of what each note sounded like. He rides his own pulse, swollen with vibration, to the place where physical and emotional meet, where he's lost to everything but the music and the music itself has become his world. He looks at Gilbert as he plays, offering him each vibration, a world in each one.

It has always been like this for Roderich: music has always been his world. Even when he abruptly lost his hearing four years ago, a few months after his fourteenth birthday, he didn't give up playing. He could still feel the music and be moved by it; he still got carried away. He felt the loss of sound keenly, but that loss heightened his sense of touch, and he gave himself over more fully than ever, immersing himself in the experience of vibration. His relationship with music helped him make the transition to deafness with an immediate and impressive ease.

The same relationship made him sullen and surly within the year. Vash learned fingerspelling just to call him "stroppy"; Roderich didn't spell anything with the finger he used in response. Most of the other people around him used the word "difficult," as in, "Roderich is going through a difficult period of adjustment." The prevalent theory was that Roderich was finally facing and feeling the loss of music. _It's not lost!_ Roderich had wanted to scream at them, but he hadn't trusted his voice.

Instead, he withdrew as completely as he could, dismissing the interpreters his father had hired on the grounds that he didn't need them, and disappearing into the music room. He refused communication and interaction with the world outside, preferring his piano and the places it could transport him.

His father indulged him for nearly a month before he had the door to the music room removed from its hinges and insisted Roderich rejoin the world of the living: "You're deaf," Mr. Edelstein told his son, "not dead." In order to facilitate Roderich's reentry into society, his father set up a series of interviews for new interpreters, offering Roderich the right of final decision in the hiring process as a conciliation.

Roderich went along with it—and rejected everyone brought before him. "They don't get my music," he said when his father demanded an explanation, prompting Mr. Edelstein to point out that all the candidates had an extensive knowledge of classical music, a requirement in the pre-screening process.

"That's not it," Roderich finally said. "It's not that they don't appreciate music. It's that they don't appreciate that I do. They don't understand how I can."

It had made as little an impression upon his father as he had expected. The interviewees continued to come in, and Roderich continued to send them on their way.

Then a boy had come. A boy his own age, with wild, bleached hair and curious eyes. Roderich did not say a word or offer a sign. Sitting at the piano, he had launched into Fauré's _Pavane_ just as he'd done with the others.

Instead of waiting politely for him to finish and then offering up some inane factoids about the life and times of the composer, the boy went to the music case, picked up the flute, and joined him.

Roderich looked at him while they played, and the boy looked back. Roderich took a chance and went into a variation—and he watched as the boy's fingers went with him. Then the boy closed his eyes, but Roderich kept his open, his gaze never leaving the boy's hands, "listening" as intently as he could until they came to the end.

"How did we sound?" he signed after they lowered the instruments to their laps.

The boy's fingers fluttered and opened into something that wasn't a word. Roderich smiled, and the search had ended.

Roderich has thought often of that fluttering and opening. It was not a word then, and it can't be a word now; it is beyond words. So Roderich sought to describe it in an equally wordless way, and that is what he is playing for Gilbert now.

He meant to watch Gilbert while he played, to gauge Gilbert's response, but the music took over as always and swept him away in spite of himself. When he finishes, Roderich takes a breath to restore himself to this plane of existence before he opens his eyes—and finds Gilbert's on him. He can feel, in the way Gilbert is looking at him, that Gilbert came with him; where the music took Roderich, Gilbert went, too.

Roderich closes the lid over the keys as Gilbert comes to sit beside him, shifting sideways so they're facing each other. When Gilbert doesn't offer anything, Roderich asks if he liked it.

Gilbert nods. Then he adds, "I've never heard that before."

"No one has."

"You..." Gilbert's hand hovers wordlessly for a moment before he ventures, "Did you compose it?"

Roderich nods. "I started it before..." His fingers fold in slowly, drifting off the last word. Instead of telling Gilbert that he continued it after, not just after he lost his hearing but after he met Gilbert, he only says, "It's not finished."

"It's beautiful," Gilbert tells him sincerely. "What is it called?"

"It doesn't have a name." Roderich smiles. "It does, it's just..."

"Shy?" Gilbert says. Roderich smiles again and nods, even though it doesn't make sense. "The song that dares not speak its name." When Roderich doesn't respond, Gilbert says, "That's from—"

Roderich reaches out to still his fingers: "I know what it's from."

The vibrations of music have stilled; the music itself has been transmuted into a gaze as they sit looking at each other.

Then Roderich leans in and kisses Gilbert, and Gilbert lets him.

And then Gilbert kisses him back.

Their lips move against each other, not quite together, not quite in sync. When their teeth collide and their mouths glance off the kiss, Roderich moves his hand to Gilbert's face, cradling his jaw. Roderich opens his mouth and lets Gilbert come to him this time, into him. When Gilbert draws back for air, Roderich lets him breathe before he follows, covering Gilbert's mouth with his own again, going inside when Gilbert opens to him. His fingertips trail down from Gilbert's ear to linger at the pulse of Gilbert's throat.

Gilbert is touching him, too, tongues and hands everywhere, but it's still not enough. Roderich reaches to bring Gilbert to a more comfortable position, a better alignment, but Gilbert shifts at the same time; Roderich's hand grazes the front of Gilbert's jeans, and he feels Gilbert's erection. He gets harder even as Roderich lingers—and then Gilbert nudges under Roderich's hand to undo his zipper, kissing Roderich and opening his own jeans so Roderich can touch him, and then opening Roderich's jeans, too.

Roderich looks down as they fall from the bench to go to their knees together. He looks at their cocks in each other's hands, then his eyes close as Gilbert kisses his neck. Turning to find Gilbert's mouth, he pushes his tongue inside. When Gilbert's fingers start to move on his cock, Roderich starts to move, too. Each to their own rhythm, then to the other's—not so much perfect mechanical synchronization as a kind of harmony. Gilbert's eyes close as their foreheads touch, but Roderich keeps his open, watching their fingers playing over their cocks, matching stroke to vibration to thrill. As he feels himself start to come, he kisses Gilbert again; he keeps kissing Gilbert to his own orgasm, too.

They stay kneeling as they part and settle back into their own space. When Roderich looks up, Gilbert is already looking at him. "Do you want to go somewhere?" Roderich asks, Gilbert's cum sliding down the words. He takes a breath. "Where we can do more?"

"Yes," Gilbert smiles.

Roderich smiles, too—until he realizes he doesn't have anywhere to take Gilbert. He hasn't thought ahead, never really thought they'd get this far.

Then Gilbert says, "I know a place we can use." He's smiling, and Roderich smiles again, too.

 

On the subway, they stand holding onto a center aisle pole. Even when enough people vacate the car that there are seats for them, they don't sit. As they stand, the motion of the train rubs them against each other. Roderich catches the moment Gilbert realizes Roderich is rubbing against him with more than train-motion. When Gilbert looks down at him, Roderich offers sweet mischief in the corners of his smile, on the tip of his tongue, in the slowness of his kiss. Roderich continues brushing himself against Gilbert when their mouths part, torturously gentle. He catches Gilbert's lips forming the words "cock tease"—and it makes him smile and become more of one.

When the last person leaves their car, Roderich relents: the boys, already wrapped around each other, shift into closer and more perfect fits, Roderich's knee bent to wedge between Gilbert's legs and press up against his cock, his thumb stroking Gilbert's cheek as they kiss. Gilbert's hand fists the material at the small of Roderich's back until Roderich reaches back to unclench Gilbert's fingers, guiding Gilbert's hand beneath the untucked shirt to settle on bare skin.

They kiss and kiss, they touch and kiss and grind, and then Roderich dares to put his hand down Gilbert's pants. He feels his way along Gilbert's hardened cock, and Gilbert is saying yes and no at the same time, but the no is a faint _we shouldn't_ while the yes is trembling with _please, please_ , so Roderich keeps smiling and feeling and stroking—

Until he sees Gilbert blanch. Gilbert's fingers circles his wrist hard, stopping him, dragging his hand away, and then dragging Roderich through the doors as they close. Roderich turns his head back in time to see Francis and Antonio smirking through the glass.

"I don't care if they saw us," Roderich signs with a burst of defiance.

"Yeah." Gilbert seems unfocused, or focused somewhere beyond Roderich. Roderich isn't sure if he should say something. Before he can decide what to do, Gilbert's eyes come to Roderich, and he grins as he signs, "This is our stop, anyhow."

Roderich is still aroused as they start up the stairs, tremors quickening his pulse. As they step out at the top, night air washes over his flushed skin like a cool shower. He opens his mouth and sucks the cool summer night into his lungs to calm himself, so he can walk normally beside Gilbert.

When he tries to steal a glance to see if Gilbert is being normal, Gilbert catches him and smiles. Roderich smiles back and asks where they're going.

"Do you remember Héderváry?" Gilbert asks.

Of course Roderich remembers her. Though Gilbert had kept her mostly to himself, he'd brought her to one of Roderich's performances and introduced her around afterward. Vash had been so impressed and envious of Gilbert for hooking up with a college girl, he hadn't even tried to hide it. "Yes," Roderich nods, and then grins. "Did you always call each other by your last names?" When Gilbert quirks a smile confirming it, Roderich teases, "Even in bed?"

"I don't kiss and tell, Roderich."

Roderich can respect that—but he can't resist one last jibe: "Do you even know her first name?"

"Yes," Gilbert grins back simply, "I do."

Laughing, Roderich yields the point without pressing it. "It's nice that you're still friends," he says instead.

Gilbert says something in response, but only with his mouth, and at this angle Roderich can't catch it. He puts a hand on Gilbert's arm and asks him to repeat it. Gilbert starts to shake his head, then looks Roderich straight on. "It's nice that you're still friends with Francis Bonnefoy."

Roderich looks at him, and Gilbert looks away, gesturing an apology because he knows Roderich doesn't usually talk about it. But this isn't usually, so Roderich catches Gilbert's hand and squeezes until Gilbert looks at him again. "It was an accident," he says.

"Yeah," Gilbert acknowledges. "But he still—"

"It was an accident," Roderich repeats firmly, but his eyes are soft as he looks at Gilbert. He reaches out to touch Gilbert's cheek with the backs of his fingers, as if he can brush away the bad feelings Gilbert apparently has been holding inside. It's not that he wants his friend to feel this way, but Roderich feels a little rush of something pleasantly unnamable that he means this much to Gilbert. "Besides, if not for this," he indicates his deafness, "you and I might never have become friends."

Gilbert studies him for a moment. "You really don’t hold it against him, do you?"

Roderich shrugs. "It hurts me more to hold onto the anger than to let it go."

"You're a good person, Roderich."

"I'm no better than anyone else."

"Yeah," Gilbert says, "you are."

They walk wordlessly.

The light is against them as they approach the next corner, so they come to a stop. As they stand waiting, Roderich feels the familiar touch of Gilbert's hand on his arm, letting Roderich know he's about to talk. "Have I ruined everything?" Gilbert asks when Roderich turns to him.

Roderich smiles. "No."

Gilbert gently brushes Roderich's hair back from his face. It feels nice, and Roderich allows himself to close his eyes. He opens them again and kisses Gilbert. The light changes color in his peripheral vision, giving them their turn to cross, but they keep standing where they are, kissing. Their bodies come closer together, into contact with each other, and Roderich feels Gilbert hard against him. He has been self-conscious of his own continued arousal, so there's relief and delight when he feels Gilbert like this, too. Roderich feels Gilbert's arousal in more than the cock hard against him; he feels it in the way Gilbert is breathing, in the weight of the vibrations.

Roderich breaks the next kiss to ask, "How close?"

"I don't know. Not very long, if you keep touching me like that."

Roderich can't help grinning as he clarifies, "How close are we to where we're going?"

He sees Gilbert's mouth form the letter O, sees the blush even in the night. He sees Gilbert grin, too. "About a fifteen-minute walk," Gilbert says. "But I know somewhere closer."

Roderich follows Gilbert into an alley a block and a half down. Leaning against the wall, Gilbert brings Roderich to him, and Roderich thrills to more than the touch of bodies, his thrill spiked with anxiety at the dark and the openness of where they are. But Gilbert's touch does more than thrill: Gilbert's hands tell Roderich that it's okay. They tell him without signing, with inarticulate touch, comfort and reassurance in the tone of Gilbert's fingertips.

As their mouths meet again, Roderich feels a nudge and widens his stance so Gilbert can press his thigh between Roderich's legs, his hands on Roderich's hips encouraging Roderich to ride. Roderich slides closer, feels Gilbert's cock against his hip, and grinds harder. Then Gilbert's hand leaves his hip and moves to his fly to undo the zipper for the second time tonight. Roderich shivers. He feels Gilbert's other hand leave his hip and for a moment, both hands cup Roderich's cock, keeping him warm. Roderich shivers again. He feels his way up from Gilbert's shoulder to his face, leans in, and kisses the corner of Gilbert's mouth before he slips in to find center, deepening the kiss.

As Gilbert strokes him off, Roderich falls out of the kiss, head back, lashes fluttering down in soft darkness. His mouth is open and he can feel his throat vibrating; he wonders what it sounds like. What he sounds like. Gilbert makes no move to quiet him, so Roderich doesn't hold himself back. When he opens his eyes, he sees Gilbert has put his other hand inside his own pants. For the second time tonight, Roderich goes to his knees. This time, he kisses Gilbert's fingers as they move, stilling them with his lips. He unwraps them with his tongue and feels them move to his hair as he begins to suck.

The night feels brighter when they resume walking, their eyes more fully adjusted to the dark.

 

No one answers the buzzer at Héderváry's apartment, but Gilbert says, "Don't worry. I know how to get in."

Roderich is expecting him to retrieve a key from somewhere. He even glances around for a flowerpot since there's no welcome mat. When he looks back, Gilbert is climbing a tree. Roderich watches him, impressed with his resourcefulness and admiring the cleverness of his body as Gilbert shimmies out on a high limb. There's a bit of a leap to the balcony below, and Roderich feels his breath rolling in on itself—then Gilbert is there at the window, jimmying it open, and Roderich lets his breath out. Gilbert waves to Roderich with a grin, signing, "Door," before disappearing inside.

The wait by the front door is taking longer than it should, and for an awful moment Roderich wonders if Gilbert has broken into the wrong apartment.

But then Gilbert opens the door. "Sorry," he signs with a sheepish grin, "I buzzed you in; I wasn't thinking."

"It's okay." Roderich's arm brushes by Gilbert as he enters, but the doorway is wide and they don't quite touch. He smiles without kissing Gilbert, and Gilbert smiles back; without touching, Gilbert takes him up the stairs to the third floor landing.

"This is it," Gilbert says. He shows Roderich into the main room of the apartment, but then goes no farther. Roderich looks around without really taking in anything, not looking at the room so much as looking for a place for his eyes.

After a few moments, Gilbert asks if Roderich would like a drink.

Roderich brightens. "A cup of coffee would be nice."

There's a flicker before Gilbert returns the smile. "Okay. I'll be right back."

While he waits, Roderich wanders around the room and stops in front of a pair of prints, clearly by the same artist: two harlequins and their violins. One harlequin has been transported, lost in the moment in communion with his violin, head bowed to it, eyes closed. The other holds his with reverence and perhaps offering, eyes open and looking straight out at the world, at whoever will meet his gaze.

The latter one captivates Roderich. The harlequin looks at him and Roderich looks back; he doesn't take his eyes off the painting even when a coffee cup appears in his peripheral vision. He signs a quick "thank you" as he reaches for the cup, slipping two fingers into the handle and balancing the weight with his thumb as he brings it to his mouth. Inhaling pleasant steam, he takes a sip. A dash of whipped cream touches his lips; the strong black coffee that follows draws him back into the real world, into the present moment. His tongue tests for stray traces of cream as he turns to thank Gilbert and praise his execution of the einspänner, which is delicious.

When his eyes go to Gilbert's hand for his response, Roderich sees the green glass bottle Gilbert's fingers are wrapped around. He glances at his own fingers wound into the handle of the coffee cup he'd asked for and feels dawning realization warm his face as he looks again at Gilbert's—oh!— _drink_.

The blush lingers beneath his skin as he steps closer, bending to set his cup on the saucer Gilbert has set on the coffee table; the blush lingers and flares as his fingertips brush over Gilbert's before finding glass. He draws the bottle from Gilbert's grasp and brings it to his own lips. Tipping the bottle and his head back together, Roderich drinks a few swallows of the beer, his eyes never leaving Gilbert's. Holding Gilbert's gaze, he traces the mouth of the bottle with his tongue, curls and dips inside, lapping droplets before they can slide down to rejoin the slosh.

Roderich presses his mouth to the bottle's again, tilts back for another swallow, and this time he lowers the bottle to lick his own lips.

Then Gilbert is licking Roderich's lips, too, and moving his lips against Roderich's in something more than a kiss. Roderich pulls back to see what Gilbert is saying. Using his hands as well as his mouth this time, Gilbert repeats, "Do you want to see the bedroom?"

In the bedroom, they undress for each other, eyes shying away only to glance back. When they're done, they take a moment to look at each other before they move toward each other, coming together in an awkward embrace. In the fumbling, in the newness of being naked together and for each other, it's like this is the first time they've ever kissed.

Then Roderich feels Gilbert say something against him, and he moves back to ask Gilbert to repeat it—but Gilbert interrupts, catching Roderich's hand before it can complete the arc of the word, and tugs Roderich to the bed.

In the middle of the bed, they kiss and touch, their bodies pressed to one another, moving together and against each other, kissing and kissing and touching, skin and friction and warmth; then Gilbert tilts Roderich's face up as his lips form the words, "Do you want to fuck me?"

Roderich blushes hotter with the thrill as he nods, rolls the word on his tongue, and offers it in sound to Gilbert: "Yes." He sees Gilbert hear him, sees the vibrations received in the flutter of Gilbert's lashes before Gilbert turns away to retrieve the lube and a condom from the nightstand drawer. Roderich doesn't have time to dwell on how Gilbert knew exactly where to look, because Gilbert is pressing the items into his hand and lying back on the pillow, legs apart.

Roderich lets his eyes rove over Gilbert's body, taking him in and losing himself in the wonder of the moment, in the amazement that he's here, that they're here together...

Motion catches him: Gilbert's hands bring him back into the reality of his fantasy as Gilbert asks, "Have you done this before?"

Roderich really likes that Gilbert is considerate enough to ask. "Yes," he smiles. "I'm okay." He unfolds the words and touches Gilbert with that hand, giving a gentle push for Gilbert to turn onto his stomach. He starts to prepare Gilbert with slick touches, the fingering so different from playing the piano, different from the way he has touched the rest of Gilbert's body, his face, his cock. This is deeper, it's inside; it's like all those times he has wanted to dig for the heart of the note, for the marrow of the music—it's like that, only hotter, and alive.

The vibrations tell him Gilbert's body is ready, so Roderich pauses to slick himself up. Gilbert twists to watch Roderich over his shoulder, and when Roderich rolls on the condom, Gilbert reaches for the light—but Roderich touches him and asks him to leave it on so they can see each other. "So we can hear each other," he says.

"Okay," Gilbert mouths, and turns to lie on his back. Roderich has so many things he wants to say, but he can't think of any of them, all of the words stuck in his throat and his chest and his belly, words curled up and vibrating silently around his internal organs. Then Gilbert spreads his legs even wider and it's not just his hands asking, it's his whole body and his eyes, too: "Do you want to now?"

"Yes." The word comes up from Roderich's lungs, comes off his tongue. "Yes," his hand echoes, as his other hand goes to his cock. He strokes himself along Gilbert's cleft, touches Gilbert's fingertips where they curl up behind his balls, and strokes back down. He goes back and forth, with his cockhead, with his fingers, feeling the tremors and tendrils of vibration as he touches Gilbert's skin. When he feels Gilbert open more, finally, finally, he starts the slide in.

It's not really a slide. Or it is, but it's slower, heavier, headier: there's a weight to it, a thickness, a friction. Friction can be sweet, the sweetest thing in the world, that purity of drawing the sound itself from the strings. This is like that, and it's something else altogether. Being inside Gilbert, like this, is not like anything. It's not like being in his own hand or Gilbert's, it's not like being in someone's mouth, it's not, it's just, it's—

Roderich lets go of thought and words, and feels it; he feels Gilbert like he feels music, unspeakably and completely.

He moves, not with slides or strokes but with something more physical, more visceral, and he feels it in his gut almost like it is Gilbert who is fucking him. He moves with thick friction. When Roderich opens his eyes, he finds Gilbert's closed, his face slanting away, his body arched. Gilbert is contorted, body and face, and Roderich doesn't know whether it's pleasure or pain or both. He can't feel what Gilbert is feeling. He feels Gilbert around him, but he can't feel Gilbert any more than he can feel the piano when the keys yield beneath his fingers.

Then Gilbert's eyes open, their gazes lock, and Gilbert moves without Roderich moving him; he moves, and Roderich moves, and they're moving together, and Roderich feels more than vibrations: he feels heat, he feels rhythm, he feels Gilbert; he feels Gilbert feeling him.

Roderich is hyperaware of Gilbert now, the way he goes beyond awareness when he is playing, when he becomes one with the instrument, and he is the instrument as much as the instrument is him. But this is better, because Gilbert is aware, too. Roderich feels the rise and fall of Gilbert's body, moving not just with pleasure and friction, but with breath. He feels his own breathing, thick and rhythmic, like the soft rush of waves coming into shore: the rush, the swell and crescendo, the fullness and sweep and the way it feels when it crashes over him like the rush is inside him, rush and pulse and—

Roderich meant to look at Gilbert the whole time, but somehow his eyes have closed. He takes a breath to bring himself back from where he's gone, and this time he doesn't have to see how Gilbert is looking at him to know Gilbert went there, too; Roderich takes another breath, and then he opens his eyes.

Gilbert's eyes are closed. He doesn't open them when their bodies part, and he doesn't open them when Roderich settles next to him. Roderich can feel Gilbert still vibrating, bare tremors, and when Gilbert turns and opens his eyes on Roderich—

_Oh!_

Oh, Gilbert...

Roderich knew from the push in that this was Gilbert's first time being penetrated, and he guessed it was maybe Gilbert's first time with another boy; now, in this moment, in Gilbert's eyes, he knows he was Gilbert's first, ever.

Roderich means to kiss Gilbert, but instead he just holds Gilbert when he moves closer. He feels Gilbert holding on until the trembling subsides, and they're just holding each other.

Draped on Gilbert, his head on Gilbert's chest, Roderich presses his ear closer, and then sneaks his hand in between. He lifts up and smiles at Gilbert. "I can hear your heart."

Gilbert smiles back, touching the spot on his belly where Roderich's chest had been resting: "I can feel yours."

They smile at each other more, and then Gilbert props up on his elbows to kiss Roderich. When they part, Roderich feels the echo of Gilbert's shift in the mattress beneath him. Supporting himself on one hand, Gilbert runs the other through his hair and glances at the bedside clock. "We should probably go soon," he signs, sitting up fully. Roderich looks at the time, too, and agrees with reluctance but grace before kissing Gilbert again.

 

They're quiet as they walk. The breeze toying with his hair tells Roderich the night itself is not silent. He looks up to watch the wind play through the trees. Glimpsing bright sparkles of stars through the lush silhouettes of branches and leaves, he imagines walking here with Gilbert tomorrow afternoon, shade and sunshine filtering down onto them through the leaves... and it hits him that he won't be here when the trees are bare this year.

As Roderich slows, he feels Gilbert come to stop beside him and touch his arm. When Roderich looks down from the trees, Gilbert asks if he's all right.

"We won't be here to see the leaves change color," Roderich says with wistful fingers, "to see them fall. We won't be here when snow falls."

"I'm sure it'll snow where you'll be."

Roderich nods.

"But?" Gilbert prompts.

"But you won't be there with me when it does." Roderich sighs and closes his eyes, feeling the fool.

Then he feels Gilbert's hand on his cheek. He opens his eyes and Gilbert takes his hand back, holds it above with his other hand; his fingers flutter as they move down from side to side. The "snow" touches Roderich's face, and he warms into a smile. Gilbert opens his hand to melt the snow on Roderich's skin, then steals away to create more snowflakes, soft, falling snow.

Gilbert's hand quiets on Roderich's face, and they kiss in first snowfall.

**Author's Note:**

> Gilbert's words about Roderich's composition are a paraphrase of the famous final line of "Two Loves" by Lord Alfred Douglas: "I am the Love that dare not speak its name." 
> 
> The artist in Elizaveta's apartment is Tatyana Gorshunova, a contemporary Russian painter; the pieces are [Pierrot Playing the Violin](http://bayimg.com/image/daddoaacp.jpg) and [Pierrot with a Violin](http://bayimg.com/image/daddpaacp.jpg).


End file.
